See this story. Yet another lawsuit has been filed to remove a candidate in South Carolina from the general election ballot. One wonders if private detectives have been at work in South Carolina, searching for candidates who didn’t file the needed campaign finance forms back in March, yet who hadn’t yet been caught. Thanks to Eugene Platt for the link.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
The whole point of the “statement of economic interests” is so that there is public disclosure of possible conflict of interests – only government income or ownership of property that benefits from nearby government improvements. And the reason for electronic filing is so that the reports can be put online. It took me about 3 minutes beginning from a Google search for the ethics commission to find the reports for the particular candidate in the news story (Colleen Condon).
She is a bit different from the other candidates. She has been in office (elected in 2008), and didn’t file for 2010, 2011, or 2012. She filed her 2012 report on May 15, 2012; and then followed up on June 11, 2012 with her 2010 and 2011 reports (incidentally this was the day before the primary). Then on July 16, 2012 she filed an amended 2012 report.
Some of the confusion may be due to the annual filing date being just a few days after the election filing date. So a current office holder would be covered by the report they filed (or should have filed) in April 2011, and then be required to file for 2012 a few days after the election filing deadline.
A challenger candidate was required to hand a paper version of the SEI to the party official that they filed their declaration of candidacy with. The party official would then send the declaration of candidacy to the state election board, so that the name could be printed on the ballot; and the SEI to the state ethics commission, so that they could transcribe the paper version into their electronic filing system.